Helping A Friend
by Kathryn Rayner Of Voyager
Summary: Post-Endgame. When Captain Chakotay is presumed dead after an accident on an Away mission, Seven goes to Kathryn Janeway for help. Seven and Chakotay's POV.


Helping A Friend

I stand outside her door, trying to summon up the courage to ring the chime. She is no longer my Captain, no longer in Starfleet, I don't know why I am so nervous about. She will help, she's always said that I can talk to her if I need to help, and I now need her more than ever. I hoped that it would just go away and disappear, but it has only be getting worse and I don't know where else to turn.

I ring the doorbell, and look down at the floor, clasping my hands in front of me. She opens the door, surprised to see me.

"Seven! It's good to see you, come in," she steps back to allow me to enter, and closes the door behind me. She gestures for me to the couch and asks if I would like anything to drink. I shake my head, staring at the floor. She gets herself a coffee and sits down next to me on the couch.

"So, Seven, what brings you here today?"

I'm silent for a moment, unsure of what to say. She doesn't push me. "I . . . I don't know where to start, Captain."

"Kathryn, Seven, call me Kathryn. Start from the beginning."

"I need someone to talk to. Chakotay got called away on a deep space mission last month. Then I got a communique last week, telling me . . . that he'd been killed on an Away mission," Kathryn gasped, her hands flying to cover her mouth as her coffee cup falls to the floor, smashing on impact, coffee spilling across the carpet. I finally look up at her. "I'm six weeks pregnant," I whisper. Her shock multiplies.

"Seven, I don't know what to say . . ."

"Help me, please, Kathryn, I don't know what to do! You're the only one I have left to turn to!" I can't help it, but I start to cry. She moves closer and wraps her arms around me, she is crying too. I cling to her, comforted that she is there for me.

Everything's dark. The pain is great. I am scared. I shouldn't be alive, but I am. I must have been presumed dead, killed by the rockfall, because my ship has left without me. I managed to steal a shuttlecraft, and the natives to the planet are chasing me, but they pull off their chase and turn away as I leave their space. I set a course for home, maximum Warp.

Kathryn lets me stay with her at her home in Indiana. She hadn't spoken with Chakotay since we left Voyager for the debriefings at Starfleet Headquarters when we returned back to the Alpha Quadrant. The shock was greater for her than it was for me, I knew it was possible that this would happen, was almost expecting it. She hadn't even known of his promotion to Captain, or of his assignment to Captain Voyager for a six-month deep space mission.

She has cared about me for a long time, and by letting me stay, I know that she is trying to redeem her broken heart and warring emotions, it is clear on her face. I do not blame her, for I cannot find fault with her. I am grateful for the gesture of kindness, it is the first one I have been presented with since Chakotay left. It is nice to know I have a friend.

I watch her from the window. She is planting seeds at the end of the garden, stretched out on her stomach, like she had been in the stories Chakotay had told me of their time on the planet called New Earth. Her hair has grown long since we arrived home, and she seems older, yet she looks as young and pretty as she always did.

My heart aches for her as well as for me. She is in more pain than I, but my heart breaks further as I think of the life growing inside me and how it will never know its father. A feeling of loneliness and emptiness washes over me.

Days, long, quiet, lonely days where there is nothing but empty space for me to see. I wish I had stayed at home, where it's safe and where my friends are. I'm starting to wish I was on board Voyager, and we were still stranded in the Delta Quadrant. Life was good then. I miss my time in the Delta Quadrant with Voyager and her crew.

The accident was unexpected and shocking. Kathryn is sleeping restlessly on the biobed next to me, crying out in pain. I can't sleep, not yet. I have one last favour to ask of my friend and former Captain before I can sleep.

She wakes with a scream, bolt upright on her biobed, looking around terrified, like a caged animal, her long hair falling over her face and sticking to the sweat that trickles down her face. She pulls her legs up to her chest and wraps her arms around them, resting her forehead on her knees. Her face, hands and arms are badly burnt and raggedly scarred.

"Kathryn," I call to her weakly. She lifts her head and looks around. I call to her again, and she looks round at me. She clambers painfully from the biobed and stumbles over to mine, disorientated, clumsy and slow with pain. She pushes herself onto my biobed by my side.

"Yes, Seven?" her voice is ragged and strained, and she struggles to speak.

"My baby . . . don't want him to die with me . . . carry him and give him life for me . . . please, Kathryn, do this one last thing for me . . ." her eyes are sorrow-filled as she nods, squeezing my hand. I try to smile, I can rest in peace now, knowing that my baby will live on with the love, care and gentleness only a mother can give her child, even if it is not her own.

The return to Earth space is a welcomed one. I am hailed as I approach Earth, and when I answer, the first thing I ask for is Seven of Nine. When they tell me there was an accident and that she's been kept under observation at Starfleet Medical along with Kathryn Janeway, I go into total shut down. I terminate the hail and fly my shuttlecraft into the San Fransisco dockyard, exiting it quickly and start trunning through the streets of San Fransisco until I reach Starfleet Medical.

"Seven of Nine, where is she?" I demand of the receptionist behind the front desk. He looks up at me in surprise.

"She's in surgery."

"Where?"

"Surgical Bay 4, floor 4." I'm already running across the reception area and jumping into the turbolift. I order it to floor 4 and am already running through the doors when the gap in the doors is wide enough for me to squeeze through. I pass many rooms, some empty, some occupied, weaving through the doctors, nurses, visitors and the occasional patient as I spot Surgical Bay 4. I start to pace outside the door to the Surgical Bay, waiting for any answer as to what had happened to Seven and Kathryn.

_Kathryn._

My heart started to beat even faster. To see Seven tore at my heart, but knowing that Kathryn had also been hurt in the same accident shredded my soul.

The sedative is wearing off. Consciousness comes slowly and I know it won't last for long. A shadow is sat by my bed, watching me and holding my hand. I know it isn't Kathryn, the sedative they gave her was stronger than mine, and the shadow is too big to be her.

As what little consciousness I know that I will get arrives, I can see that the shadow is Chakotay, battered and brusied.

I sit by Seven's side as she fades into consciousness. The doctors tell me that she doesn't have much time, and that she'll explain the rest to me. She stares at me for a while, blinking.

"I was pregnant," she whispers, "I couldn't let my baby die with me, Chakotay, I couldn't take a life." I squeeze her hand reassuringly. I know she understands the question in my eyes. "I asked Kathryn to carry him for me, Chakotay, she cares so much," her eyes are starting to close, "I'm sorry."

Her hand goes limp in mine and her head lolls to the side as the pulse line on the monitor above her head flatlines. The doctors arrive and attempt to resusitate her, but it's no use. They turn off the monitor and they take her away.

I sit and stare at the biobed where she had been mere moments before. Time has stopped for me. My mind is confused, it isn't working properly, it isn't proccessing anything. I don't know what to do, I feel so helpless, my heart is feeling empty.

"No . . . no . . . no . . ."

I turn around, noticing Kathryn on the biobed behind me for the first time. She's frowning, murmuring in a distressed and vulnerable voice that I've never heard her use before, her hands clenching and unclenching. Her stomach is swollen slightly, my son growing inside her.

"NO!" she screams, sitting bolt upright on the the biobed, her hair – longer than before, but as auburn-red and pretty as ever – falls down her back and over her shoulders, a few stray strands sticking to the sweat on her forehead. Her blue eyes are panicked and she looks disorientated and confused as she puts her hands flat out on the biobed behind her to support her. She sees me, but doesn't seem to recognize me. "Where am I?" she asks, fear in her voice.

"You're at Starfleet Medical." Shock registers on her face.

"Seven . . ." she looks over my shoulder, then puts her head in her hands and starts to sob, her breathe hitching in her distress. As pity starts to well up inside me, I slide onto the biobed next to her and take her in my arms. She tenses for a second but soon relaxes against me, sobbing in confusion, distress, grief and shock.

I stroke her hair, and it makes me feel better to be holding someone close and comforting, finally chasing away the emptiness in my heart and replacing it with saddened, grief-stricken emotions, replacing the loneliness with a small seed of warmth towards Kathryn.

We walk down the main road of Bloomington in silence. She holds my hand, and I can't bring myself to pull away from her. She wants a small shred of emotional comfort, a reassuring that I won't disappear into thin air, and I can feel myself taking a small shred of comfort at holding her hand as well.

Towards the end of the main street, she tugs at my hand, and leads me onto a small, well-trodden, woodland footpath. The footpath runs parallell to a small stream, and she seems to be mesmerized by it as we walk, and I find myself being drawn to watch it flow through its course, over stones and through the river plants that sway above the water in the afternoon wind.

When the stream starts to weave away from the path, I look up and see a small country house through the trees. I smile. Kathryn had always tried to describe to me what her home in Indiana looked like, but had refused flat out to make a Holodeck program based around it, always telling me she would bring me here one day.

Any other time, I would have been overjoyed to spend time with Kathryn and see where she lived, entralled by its beauty, but the events of the last few days cast a shadow over all of these things. I don't want it to be this way, but I know that it has to be this way for a while until we've sorted our confused and messed up lives out.

A dog barks, and the front door opens. A scruffy, mutli-coloured St. Bernard ran out, jumping up at Kathryn. She lets go of my hand to absently stroke behind the dog's ears as her mother, Gretchen, came out to us, worry etched on her face. The doctors at Starfleet Medical had told me that they had informed Gretchen of everything that had happened, but I still felt uncertain and daunted as she approached. I hung back a little and sat down on the grass to greet the dog as Kathryn went to hug her mother.

I wander across the hall and knock quietly on Kathryn's bedroom door. There's a pause before the door opens and Kathryn, bleary-eyed and tired, peers out, squinting against the brightness of the hall lights.

"Can I talk to you for a while? I can't sleep because a few things are bugging me right now." She nods, and steps aside to allow me entrance into her bedroom. She flicks on the light and closes the door before joining me on her bed, watching me tiredly.

When I remain silent for a few moments, she asks softly, "What would you like to talk about, Chakotay?"

I open and close my mouth for a few seconds before I find the question I am looking for swirling around in my mind. "Why didn't you ever contact us?"

She looked down at her hands, twisting them in her lap. "When you didn't say goodbye after the debriefings, I . . . I wasn't sure how much you wanted to see or hear from me again, because I-I hadn't really been that much of a friend to you and Seven during the last few months on Voyager. I . . . I thought that if you or Seven wanted to talk to me, you would call or come visit . . ." Her voice was cracked.

"Kathryn, it's okay. You didn't have much of a chance to be a good friend to us on Voyager, and I should've said goodbye, but I had barely had the chance to see you during the debriefings, and I didn't know how to say goodbye to you." She smiled up at me. I smiled back at her. "It's good to see you smiling, Kathryn."


End file.
